Gen. 39-41—These chapters together form the third part in the history.
Here we see Joseph filling up the measure of his sorrow, while his brethren are filling up the measure of their sins. He in exile preserves his purity and separation to God, like a Nazarite purer than snow and whiter than milk, while they at home are defiling the covenant. God is with him, and man against him. He takes his place in the cloud of witnesses, suffering for righteousness' sake. For conscience toward God he endures grief, suffering wrongfully. But the Lord is still with him. God shows that His covenant was with him, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed; for Potiphar first, and then the keeper of the prison, were made to prove this in their own persons. The archers are sorely grieving him, and shooting at him; but his bow abides in strength, and the arms of his hands are made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. He may be persecuted of men, but God will not forsake him, but give him favor in the sight of strangers in spite of all the dishonor and humiliation to which the wickedness of his kindred and others may reduce him. And all this “affliction of Joseph” is made the discipline of God, Who loved him; for as we read, “the word of God tried him” (Psa. 105:1919Until the time that his word came: the word of the Lord tried him. (Psalm 105:19)). This tribulation under the divine hand was made to work patience, and by it the crown was brightening for him
And we find Joseph not only distinguished with favor, but in some sense glorified also in his prison. For though power in the earth is not his yet, so that he could burst his prison doors, yet we see him glorified as a prophet, knowing the secret of God.
These dreams of the butler and baker were “according to the interpretation,” words which imply that they were of God. For dreams have two sources either God sends them, or the multitude of business (Joel 2:2828And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: (Joel 2:28), Eccl. 5:33For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words. (Ecclesiastes 5:3)). In them God may reveal His mind, or they may be simply “divers vanities,” the fruit of our own passions or necessities (Eccl. 5:77For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God. (Ecclesiastes 5:7), Isa. 29:33And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee. (Isaiah 29:3)).
And thus was it with the Lord in the day of His sorrow, and still with Him in measure in His sympathy for the church, for in that He is still saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” In Jesus, as in Joseph, it was clearly shown that, though in weakness and rejection, God's covenant was with Him, that He was God's object, all blessing passing through His hand, though in shame and poverty. And even beyond this. Jesus was in His day of sorrow, like Joseph, glorified as a Prophet (Luke 4:1515And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. (Luke 4:15)). And so in His saints now in measure. They may be despised, but they “have the mind of Christ,” they are in the secrets of God, they know the love of the Father, the judgment of the world, and the coming kingdom and power of Jesus. And of these secrets they bear witness to sinners, as Joseph told of the secrets of God to Pharaoh, and his servants. They tell both of judgment and of mercy, as he did.
Such are the ways of Christ, and the saints now. They are among strangers, in a world that is but foreign to them, and where they have no citizenship. They may be poor, “silver and gold having none,” lonely, in prison, and forgotten there, like Joseph. But “God is with them.” Patience with self-denial, and a holy keeping of their Nazaritism or separation to God, is their calling, and their present praise. But even in the humiliation, they have “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” in Christ. They can interpret the dreams that tell out God's purposes; the voices of the prophets and apostles are their delight and their counselors.
But in the close of all this we see Joseph not only as at the first comforted in sorrow, but brought out of sorrow—not only glorified as a prophet, but introduced into the full confidence of him who held the royal power, and authority in the earth. Pharaoh was then the lord of Egypt, and Egypt was then the lady of kingdoms; and Pharaoh gives Joseph authority to go over all the land, as the great executor of all rule, desiring that no man in Egypt was to lift up hand or foot without him. Joseph receives the king's ring, and rides in the second chariot. He is made lord of Pharaoh's house, and ruler of all his substance, to bind his princes at his pleasure, and teach his senators wisdom (Psa. 105).
He becomes the sole treasurer and dispenser of the resources of the whole earth, the one who alone could open and shut those storehouses on which his once injurious brethren, and all the world were soon to become entire dependents for preservation in the earth. Only in the throne was Pharaoh greater than he; and all this Pharaoh makes him and gives him, because he owned that the Spirit of God was in him, that he had been distinguished as “the friend of God,” knowing His ways, and was entitled to be called “the revealer of secrets.”
This was indeed glory among the strangers. The poor was thus raised from the dust, and the beggar from the dunghill, to be set even above princes. But this was not all. Joseph must have joy as well as glory among them, and the king gives him a wife, a lady of honor, and Joseph becomes the husband and father of a family in this strange land. Like Adam he gets Eve as well as dominion.
Such was Joseph now. And surely a greater than Joseph is here. Surely this is none other than Jesus the Son of God seated beside the Father on His throne in His full confidence and favor, and though cast out by Israel, receiving unquestioned title to all power, and made the Treasurer of all that grace and blessing upon which Israel and the nations are soon to draw for life and preservation in the earth. And all this because a right spirit was in Him as Pharaoh owned in Joseph. Jesus honored not Himself. “Do not interpretations belong to God?” said Joseph. “My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me,” said Jesus. Jesus was obedient, wherefore God has highly exalted Him. “Grace is poured into Thy lips: therefore God hath blessed Thee forever.”
And besides all this present glory on the throne, the Son of God has received a present joy, as we have seen Joseph did in Egypt. He has now received, from among Gentile strangers, a new unlooked for family. And Joseph's Egyptian family clearly typify Christ's heavenly family, or the church. For in the joy of His having received the church, the Lord has for a while forgotten Israel, as Joseph called his first-born “Manasseh,” for “God,” said he, “hath made me forget all my toil and all my father's house;” and his second son, he calleth “Ephraim,” for “God,” said he, “hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
All this a child might trace; but the Holy Ghost, Who graciously reveals “to babes and sucklings,” has Himself led us in this interpretation. In the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, the rapture of the Son of man into heaven is given exactly the same place as the glory of Joseph in Egypt. The whole bearing of Stephen's words leads to this. He is drawing out the proofs, that Israel had been always resisting the Holy Ghost; that as their fathers had done, so had that present generation been then doing; and thus that their treatment of Joseph and Moses (whose history as well as Joseph's he recites) were thus types of their treatment of the Just One. Joseph, it is true, was at last made known to his brethren, as we shall see presently, and at the last also Moses delivered his people. But during a long interval, both were separated from them. And so with Christ. In the end He will be made known to Israel, as their Redeemer and Brother, but for the present He is separated from them. And His separation is unto heaven, as Joseph's had been unto Egypt, and Moses' unto Midian. And wives and children given to Joseph and Moses, in the place and during the season of this separation, is thus necessarily the type of the gathering of the church to Jesus now.
But Joseph and Moses not only get a special glory and a peculiar joy in the separated place, but they are there also under preparation for becoming the future benefactors and redeemers of their unbelieving brethren. Joseph, as I have been noticing, is made the treasurer of those supplies on which Israel was soon to draw; and Moses gets the rod of strength by which he was soon to make a passage for Israel forth from the land of their bondage. But, till the appointed hour, Israel was in an evil case, filling up their sins, and knowing the service of the nations; as now they are a scattered and outcast people, and their sanctuary a disclaimed dishonored ruin, while He, Whom they have rejected, is in heaven. So perfect are the patterns of old, of the secrets which are now revealed onto us by the Spirit.